Many machines include implements that engage earth, rock, and other materials that may be abrasive and may cause implement damage and wear. Some such implements include buckets, scoops, shovels, dozer blades, scraper blades, etc., that include a horizontal edge that engages material and, in some cases, side edges that also engage the material. Buckets, scoops, and shovels generally are in the shape of a container for material and usually include a primary material engaging surface with a digging edge and two side edges. Some scraper blades also include side edges that, together with the blade itself may form a shallow container.
While it stands to reason that the horizontal or digging edge of a bucket or the ground engaging edge of a scraper blade, for example, will incur severe wear during operation where hard and abrasive materials are encountered, other implement edges, for example the side edges, also may be subjected to the same abrasive forces. The side edges of an implement may engage material with substantially the same forces exerted on a horizontally oriented digging edge of a bucket or blade. As a result, these edges also may incur severe wear. While side edges may sometimes be made more robust and somewhat reinforced by sidebars, these sidebars still may experience severe wear.
Implements that may be expected to encounter heavy abrasion and wear have typically been provided with replaceable wear members and shrouds usually made of more abrasion resistant material than the implements themselves. Such wear members and shrouds have been placed along edges of the implements to protect the edges and extend implement life. Various replaceable sidebar protectors have been devised to further protect implement side edges against abrasion and wear. Such sidebar protectors have generally been tailored to a particular implement, and even to a particular size of the same general type of implement. Some implements may have sides with straight edges, curved edges, or a combination of both straight portions and curved portions on the edges. Curved edges may be convex, concave, or a combination of both. As a result, a sidebar protector ordinarily may be more or less uniquely designed for a particular side edge contour. In addition, typical sidebar protectors attach to opposing sides of a sidebar, for example via a pair of depending attachment tabs that straddle the sidebar. As a result, a given sidebar protector may be limited to use on an implement with a given sidebar thickness.
There exists a need for a more universal sidebar protector and a more adaptable sidebar protection system. It would be both beneficial and desirable to provide a sidebar protector and protection system that could be readily adapted to the contour of a number of implements having differently contoured side edges. It also would be advantageous to provide a sidebar protector and protection system that could be readily adapted to implements of different sizes and with sidebars of different thicknesses.
One type of protection system for the side edges of a bucket is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,914,885 issued to Moreau on Oct. 28, 1975 (“the '885 patent”). The '885 patent discloses a system wherein a bucket has a leading edge of substantially circular and constant cross-section, with the leading edge disclosed as including both the edge of the base and the edges of the sides of the bucket. The protection system of the '885 patent includes a series of “rings” with an internal cross-section similar to that of the bucket leading edge. The individual rings may be slid onto an end of the leading edge and accumulated until the entire leading edge is protected by the series of rings. Worn rings may be replaced by removing the series of rings from an end of the leading edge until the worn rings are removed, replacing the worn rings with new rings, and then replacing rings until the entire leading edge is once again provided with rings.
While the system of the '885 patent may be useful for some applications, it may be problematic. The '885 patent discloses that the entire leading edge of the bucket must be of both a circular and a constant cross-section, and that the protective rings must likewise include an internal circular and constant cross-section. As a result, the system of the '885 patent is not universal and is not adaptable to either a large number of implements or implements with sidebars of varying contours. In addition the system of the '885 patent is not adaptable to implements with side edges of varying thicknesses.